Theodore J. Kreps

Dividends, Interest, Profits, Wages, 1923–35

Introduction, 561.— I. Labor incomes, dividends and interest: all corporations, 563. — What is national income? 566.— Choice of a base for comparison, 571.— Dividends and interest payments vs. net earnings, 573.— II. The manufacturing industries taken separately, 575. — Further evidence on dividend payments, 581.— Corporate capitalization during the depression, 584.— III. Confusion of profits with interest and dividends, 585.— Different experience of these items, 586.— The fortunate exceptions, 590.— Computation of profits, 590. — Reduction in interest payments, 593.— Net profits in 1933 and 1934, 595.— Deficits, 599.— Conclusions, 599.

Export, Import, and Domestic Prices in the United States, 1926–1930

Introduction, 195. — I. The distinction between international and domestic commodities, 196; the criterion of physical movement, 198; of price behavior, 200; of market independence, 205. — II. The statistical procedure, 207; the selection of commodities, 207; of prices, 208; and of weights, 211. — III. The results, 215; the movements of the primary international and domestic indexes, 216; the difference in level of the New York and Chicago indexes, 218; comparison of the indexes with medians of the same commodities, 221; the analysis of sub-groups within the primary indexes, 223. — Conclusion, 225.

THOR HULTGREN, with the assistance of Maude R. Pech. Cost, Prices, and Profits : Their Cyclical Relations. Pp. xxvi, 229. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research (Distributed by Columbia University Press), 1965.

industrial-relations studies, for they have earned a special niche in the archives; in them, investigators have undertaken some giant methodological steps in labor-relations research. They have moved from traditional descriptive case studies toward more penetrating analysis, with a significant typology of relationship patterns that can facilitate comparative studies and quantitative evaluation. The focus of studies reported here is on local union-management relationships in the above-mentioned communities. This volume is a combined and perhaps final report on two phases of the studies, four

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The author was ably assisted during the twenty years in which the book grew by a staff of research assistants. With the cooperation of federal and state agencies he has succeeded in taking an exhaustive inventory of the resources of the region, particularly the agricultural ones, of the various forms of their utilization, their management, productivity, value, and service to the people. More than that, he lays bare the functional performance of the rural economy for longer periods up to the present. This is methodologically a first-rate achievement and a laboratory demonstration worth in itself the attention of the

ELLSWORTH, P. T. The International Economy: Its Structure and Operation. Pp. xxi, 922. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950.

THER papers in this volume have adequately unfolded the difficulties and the possibilities of inducing reluctant American capital to flow into reluctant underdeveloped areas. The task here is not to belabor further the recalcitrance in the economic, political, and cultural attitudes of others, but rather to spotlight the challenge of Point Four to us. That challenge is simple but fundamental: we must practice what we preach-free, competitive enterprise. Two points in particular are of vital importance: (1) we must reduce or eliminate our governmental barriers to trade; (2) we must reduce or eliminate our business barriers to trade.

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economy of the countries studied that in many cases they may have overshadowed the thing the author was attempting to study. They even vary within different sections of the same country. The author’s statement that &dquo;nearly half of our farmers produce so little that they do not have enough to eat, much less to sell,&dquo; would indicate that they must be unemployed the greater part of the year, and are poor managers on very poor soil. Unsuccessful, undernourished, and underprivileged people are not a good backbone for their present form of government, which they are likely to blame for their condition. They are the ones who look with favor on a change. &dquo;Family farming cannot save democracy. Only democracy can save the family farm. ... For democracy to save the family farm, those who believe in the latter must find in it more than a romantic symbol. It must represent more than the tradition of laissez-faire government. All parties have rejected this in favor of public price subsidies and marketing and production control. Even the critics of parity concede the wisdom of government intervention for purposes of education, trade regulation, economic planning and, above all, the conservation of soil.&dquo; The co-operative movement is cited as a possible solution. It is pointed out that it has been a boon to small-scale purchasers and producers in Scandinavian countries. The above may seem to be relatively broad statements to make even at this stage of the hot and cold war that has been going on the last seven years. The author concludes that the desirable goal for agriculture requires the re-employment of large numbers of farmers and farm laborers in nonagricultural occupations, and a reallocation of productive resources within agriculture. Like many present-day programs, this plan is weak in that it plans for only one branch of our economy. Industrial labor may not appreciate having a million or so farm work-

Point Four and the Domestic Economy

low twenty chapters, each devoted to some particular country or region. Together they cover all the larger nations (except Brazil, Czechoslovakia, and Japan) and many smaller ones in Europe and South America. These chapters, done by specialists on the areas treated, present an amazing amount of factual material in a very readable and illuminating fashion. Treatment varies as to pattern, thoroughness, emphasis, and competence. There are indications of differences in ideological backgrounds, but on the whole these studies serve to illustrate and support the need and propriety of the economic program outlined by Dr. Ezekiel in Chapter II. His thesis is that &dquo;the great task of the postwar generation is to complete the industrial revolution-complete it by spreading industrial opportunity throughout the world, putting the means and mechanisms of large-volume modern production, agricultural and industrial, into the hands of peoples in all countries and aiding them to control and use them wisely and effectively.&dquo; Statistics presented indicate that high income and industrialization tend to